It’s business as usual between the United States and Israel

The numbers may be shocking but it’s business as usual in that most venomous of love affairs, the United States-Israeli relationship.

In a recent post, we highlighted the shocking cost inflicted on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip by Israel’s 50-day aggression.

Moreover, we’re all familiar with why nine months of waste-of-time talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority came to nothing in April this year. US Secretary of State John Kerry himself spelled it out in his “poof” statement, when he blamed Israel’s relentless building of squatter colonies and its failure to keep its promise to release Palestinian prisoners for the collapse of the talks.

We also know that the United States’s actions belie its words of displeasure with Israel’s criminal behaviour. We all remember that, despite its huffing and puffing, the US allowed Israel, in the midst of its recent Gaza onslaught, to tap a local US arms stockpile to resupply it with grenades and mortar rounds so that it continues to kill and maim Palestinian civilians – the overwhelming majority of casualties in Gaza were innocent civilians.

Now we learn that under cover of the smoking mirrors of peace talks and the smoke of the incinerated civilians of Gaza, the inexorable growth of the Jewish squatter colonies eating up what remains of Palestine has been accelerating at an unprecedented rate.

According to the Israeli news website Ynet, “Israel’s settler population in the West Bank increased by 2 per cent in the first half of the year… signalling robust growth in the settlements even while Israel was conducting peace talks with the Palestinians”.

It quoted the Yesha Council, the official umbrella group representing the more than 100 Jewish squatter colonies in the occupied West Bank, as saying that the squatter population “grew to 382,031 as of 30 June [2014], up 2 per cent from 374,469 on 31 December [2013]. The projected 4 per cent annual growth rate would be more than double Israel’s nationwide growth rate, according to official figures”.

Meanwhile, Washington’s slavish support of Israel continues as if that international pariah were a model law abiding state.

The World Tribune news website reports that the US Defence Department has awarded two contracts for fuel to the Israeli Luftwaffe and Heer, or army, guaranteeing fuel supplies to the Israeli Wehrmacht until December 2015.

“This is a fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for aviation turbine fuel for the country of Israel,” the Pentagon said.

According to World Tribune, on 1 September “the Pentagon awarded a USD 324.9 million contract to Valero Marketing and Supply Co. for the supply of jet fuel through November 2015…

The Pentagon also awarded a USD 45.6 million contract to Petromax for gasoline for the Israel army…”

Now Israel can rest assured that thanks to American taxpayers it will have plenty of fuel not only to continue its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, but also to murder and maim the occupied.